Shakti Ramsurrun's trial supposed to begin in April, nearly 5 years after he was charged

Shakti Ramsurrun is still awaiting trial on three counts of first-degree murder laid against him in May 2012. His lawyer filed an application to stay the charges due to the nearly five-year delay, but a judge in Gatineau ruled against it Thursday.

The lawyer for a man facing three counts of first-degree murder wants the charges stayed because it's taken nearly five years to get to trial.

Shakti Ramsurrun, 33, is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, 21-year-old Anne-Catherine Powers, her mother, 63-year-old Louise LeBoeuf, and LeBoeuf's partner, 58-year-old Claude Lévesque, at a home in Aylmer, Que., in May 2012.

The trial was expected to begin in early April 2017, nearly five years after the charges against Ramsurrun were first laid.

But a landmark Supreme Court of Canada ruling known as the Jordan decision recently ​set new rules for an accused's right to be tried within a reasonable time frame, and Ramsurrun's defence lawyer has filed a motion to stay the charges based on the ruling.

Trial delays of more than 30 months in Superior Court, or 18 months in provincial courts, are now "presumptively unreasonable" and violate the accused's charter right to be tried within a reasonable time, according to the Jordan decision, which came down in July.

If the Supreme Court's new time frames are missed, the onus is on the Crown to argue the delays were caused by exceptional circumstances that were either reasonably unforeseen or beyond the Crown's control — such as a medical or family emergency.​

In this case, defence lawyer Richard Dubé said limited resources and court room availability in the Gatineau courthouse are to blame. They had to wait about 10 months for a preliminary inquiry, and in 2015 a trial date was set for 2017, Dubé said.